Massive cache of explosives, bomb manuals found in Maryland home

[Feral Child]

8. Hobbyist.

Last edited Wed Jan 8, 2014, 03:00 PM - Edit history (4)

100 pounds of "materiel" will end up with about 5 pounds +/- of energetic compounds.

I have over 100 lbs of "bomb making chemicals" in my garage. I have a 50# bag of fertilizer (ammonium nitrate). Several tons of AN laced with diesel fuel is the compound used in Oklahoma City.

I have several pounds of erythritol, an artificial sweetener. It can be easily transformed into erythritol tetranitrate by nitrating it with the gallon of commercial drain cleaner (98% sulfuric acid) and some of the AN mentioned above.

I have about a pound of home-made thermite, an exothermic compound that burns with ferocious heat, even under water. Iron rust and powdered aluminum, mixed. The rust provides oxygen, the aluminum is the fuel. After the burn what's left is elemental iron. The military uses it for incendiary purposes, I use it for welding metal sculptures.

I have a one gallon can of methyl ethyl ketone, a strong solvent. One of the things I use that for is cleaning metal surfaces prior to welding. I also have a gallon jug of 35% hydrogen peroxide (hair bleach), I use it in disinfectant solutions to clean the rooms in which I foster rescued animals. Combine the 2 with a splash of the sulfuric acid as a catalyst and you produce MEK-peroxide, a much safer initiator than the Acetone-peroxide used by most Mad Bombers. AP is in the form of crystals which can rub together and detonate, MEKP is an oily liquid that is much less volatile and prone to accident.

Somewhere I probably still have the copy of the Anarchist Cookbook (printed in the '70s, now a collectible) I was given as a joke when I was 25. Maybe I have my old Army field manual on explosives and booby-traps that I was issued prior to my Nam deployment.

I don't have a mini-14 automatic rifle, but I do have a Saiga (Kalashnikov) automatic shotgun.

Oh, I also have several tattoos.

I MUST be a terrorist, right?


I'll admit that as a very young man with a class of high school chemistry in my repertoire, I played with energetic compounds. I terrorized rocks and cacti (and probably some mice and lizards) in an abandoned quarry about 10 miles from the nearest civilization.

This guy was clearly making explosives, quite dangerously, in his residential neighborhood. I am not excusing his stupidity (or my own, those many years ago). Truth is, you'll find the same thing happening in thousands of houses by 14 to 30 year old adolescents across country and throughout the world.

There are websites and discussion boards world-wide where geeky kids talk about their experiments and adventures.

Some have been shut down by anxious governments, because they fear Islamic terrorists will learn how to wreak havoc with knowledge they've gained there. As if the US military hasn't trained thousands of actual terrorist, foreign and domestic...

Of course, many more sites have been set up by high school boys relishing the rebelliousness of thwarting The Man...


This guy didn't have near enough stuff to do more than blow up a mailbox. This is a sterling example of Law Enforcement colluding with the drama-hungry media to convince us that they're spending the billions of tax-dollars they suck-up in genuine urban-commando operations that keep us safe.

He was dangerous, no doubt, and LE properly interdicted before he fucked up and lost his fingers. BUT, he isn't a terrorist. He's just a dumb kid slightly too clever for his own good.



CAVEAT: Kids, don't try this at home. Sign off and watch an episode of the MythBusters, instead. They're experts (and Kari Byron is kawaii).

Most of the articles in the Anarchist Cookbook are junk that will fizzle & smoke if you try to use them, or blow up in your face.

The examples I've given above for household-explosives are incomplete and should not be attempted. Rigorous attention to detail, careful measurements, and concise temperature controls are necessary to make more than sticky, stinky glop with the chemicals I've listed.